Nature Changes Your Brain
Frances Bonne’t teaching at Franklin Elementary’s school garden this spring. In this lesson, the second graders first estimated, then measured the size of the garden beds as part of their math curriculum.
Missoula County Public Schools are in crisis. With an eight million dollar shortfall and rising costs, the school board is looking to make its most drastic cuts in a generation with as many as 100 teachers, administrators, and other staff positions on the line.
Garden City Harvest offers Farm to School programming at no cost to our public schools. Our farmer-educators are teaching year round with hands-on, dig in the dirt and eat kale programing that changes kids’ daily lives. The curriculum is designed to meet educational standards in math and science. And it gets students outside to regulate, grow things in the soil, and taste lots of veggies.
Today, I am asking you to join in this work.
The impact of Farm to School was clear when I recently visited Frances Bonne't’s second grade classroom. Ms. Bonne’t has taught at Franklin Elementary School for the past nine years. The school falls in the heart of a high needs neighborhood.
“Students who are having a difficult time in their lives – for various reasons – tend to disrupt class. When things are not going well in their lives outside of school we see big, big behaviors inside of school. The school garden is a tool I use to help them settle in and feel safe here.
“At the beginning of the year they go outside in the garden and they're not quite sure what to do with the space being so open and free. And we work on it.
“Eventually, when they go into the garden they cue in to how to be out there and they calm down. They just melt into it. The same thing happens for all of the students, but I think for these kids it's more obvious because their behaviors are so much bigger.”
Each year, Farm to School engages over 6,000 students in school gardens, on the farm, and in the classroom. There is no doubt that all of these students connect in ways that are not possible otherwise.
“I think there is some sort of magical force field over the garden because kids will try anything in there. Dinosaur kale is the coolest thing to an eight-year-old! Kale has its own consistency and taste, but I've never had a kid that didn't like it. They think it's the best thing to be able to pop off their own little stem of kale and munch on it.”
In the winter months, our Farm to School staff members go into the classroom and teach Farmer in the Classroom lessons to hundreds of second graders, including Ms. Bonne’t’s students.
“Nature changes your brain,” says Ms. Bonne’t. “There is so much science behind that.”
We rely on our community to make this program happen in the schools year after year. As the season renews, we ask you to invest in this work.
Bonus, a donor is matching dollar for dollar any gift given by June 15 — your gift will go twice as far!
Hope you are enjoying the green spring out there!
Warmly,
Jean Zosel, Executive Director
